Moonshots Beyond the Cloud

If you experienced the home and personal computing revolution of the early 1980s, you may have read some books that got you hooked up with programming. These books led you through the intellectual adventure of using computing to explore interesting problem domains. I got a recent book that brought back that fascination and excitement with programming, Impractical Python Projects: Playful Programming Activities to Make You Smarter by Lee Vaughan. The cover of the book Impractical Python Projects in the Google Play Books app on my Pixel 2 XL phone. The book is not a Python tutorial or guide. Instead, it presents stimulating coding projects for non-programmers who want to use Python for doing experiments, test theories, or simulate natural phenomena . This includes professionals who are not software developers but use programming to solve problems in science and engineering. Exploring and understanding the problem domain is an integral part of the book’s projects along with th...

I released a new update of my book Space Apps for Android: Discover the Best Astronomy and Space Apps on September 8, 2019. If you purchased the book, you can download the latest version for free from your Leanpub library . Chapter The Sun of my book Space Apps for Android in Google Play Books on my Pixel 2 XL phone. This new version comes with the complete rewrite of chapter The Sun , which now has an introduction. I removed all the material on Solar Observer because the app is partially obsolete and doesn’t provide much value. I also added the entries for Eclipse Calculator 2 , the best eclipse app, and SunViewer 2, which lets you view the latest solar images. Why an update? Because I’m self-publishing the book as a work in progress with the Lean Publishing process, so I’m constantly updating and expanding it.

The HDEV experiment on the International Space Station stopped working sometime in July 2019. The official NASA app for Android removed HDEV support in version 1.90, released on August 30, 2019, as its change log entry notes: Removed the ISS HDEV section which has reached end of life HDEV (High Definition Earth-Viewing ) was a set of commercial HD video cameras mounted on the exterior or the ISS and aimed at the Earth . The purpose of this NASA experiment was to evaluate the effects of long-term exposure to space radiation of off the shelf video equipment. The cameras streamed beautiful live images of the Earth from space and worked continuously, except for the night side of the orbit or when operational constraints prevented it. The end of life notice in the video feed of NASA's HDEV experiment. Credit: NASA. The loss of the payload is not unexpected as the harsh environment was eventually going to damage the devices. Still, the general public loved these views and...

Some bloggers write a book by putting together their posts, revising the content, and expanding it with new material. I always used Google+ as a blog and I did something similar by using my posts as an early draft of the book Space Apps for Android I self-published. In a video conversation with Nina Trankova , Monika Schmidt, and Bob Danley, a part of Nina’s "On e Board" series, I explained how I repurposed the posts of one of my Google+ collections as the backbone of the book. I also discussed the Lean Publishing workflow with which I produce the book.

Some time ago the failure rate of the fingerprint sensor of my Pixel 2 XL Android phone got worse. The device was failing to recognize my fingerprint more and more. Two simple things I did fixed the issue, here they are in case you experience something similar. The first was to clean up the fingerprint sensor . I had been using the phone for a year or so and the sensor had likely gathered significant dirt. Another thing I did was to scan more fingerprints of the same finger to increase the recognition accuracy. 2-3 scans of the same finger should be enough, try more if there is little or no improvement. You may want to scan also a different finger.

The Carnival of the Indies  is a blog carnival for indie authors. Every month the blog The Book Designer posts a collection of links to selected posts by indie authors on industry-related topics such as book design and production, success stories, writing tools and tips, and more. I closely follow this resource packed with valuable information and now I’ve had the opportunity to contribute. Issue #107 (August 2019) of the Carnival of the Indies  includes (under Book Design and Production) a link to a post to my blog, Leanpub and Lean Publishing . It’s an overview for authors who are not familiar with the process and the platform.

Google Blogger turned 20. It was actually Pyra Labs that launched the blogging platform on August 23, 1999 before Google acquired it in 2003. Peggy K celebrated the 20th anniversary of Blogger by briefly telling its history, which is part of the history of blogging, and explains why it’s still worth blogging and using Blogger in this social era. Peggy wrote: While it feels like social media has taken over much of publishing over the past decade, the tide may be turning. As there have been increasing concerns about privacy breaches, harassment and fickle algorithms on Facebook and Twitter, there are rumblings that blogging is making a comeback. I recently came back to Blogger and my motivations are similar to Peggy’s, such as Blogger having the features I need and being integrated in the Google ecosystem. I also share her hope the tide may be turning and blogging may be making a comeback, or at least growing a little more visible and relevant. What about the future of Blogger...